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18 May 2012

This week’s spellings are words ending in ‘ed’ for the past tense. Your child will be tested on Friday 25 May 2012.

• served
• stroked
• refused
• replaced
• dawdled
• included
• grumbled
• surprised
• behaved
• pleased

18 May 2012

This week’s homework is Practice Makes Perfect: the children have to read the text and answer the questions.

It’s due in on Wednesday 23 May 2012.

18 May 2012

The homework this week is talk time and is due in on Wednesday 23 May.

I can talk about a time when I have felt proud of someone.

In keeping with our SEAL theme this week, the homework is to discuss a time when they have felt proud of someone else. This could be a friend or relative.

Remember, with talk time homeworks there is no need to write anything in the homework books; a few notes might be helpful but not essential.

18 May 2012

This week’s spellings are all tricky words which have been misspelled in our writing recently.

18 May 2012

This week’s spellings are all tricky words which have been misspelled in our writing recently. Children will be tested on eight out of the ten words on Friday 25 May.

Creating a mood

Tomorrow is the final SAT of the week: long writing.

Today in class we have been discussing how to create a mood ready for the writing tomorrow.

Here are some mood words that the children might want to create WOW words and phrases about. This will help them in creating a mood and interesting their audience with their writing tomorrow.

• relief
• worry
• anger
• mystery
• shock
• excitement

Who said exercise was boring?

As part of our PE we went into the front playground to use the equipment.  Our muscles got a good work out; there was lots of climbing, jumping and hanging around!  Look at these two children strengthening their arm muscles and showing great balance and what an amazing leap from another!

Testing times

At the end of every term, teachers make an assessment in Reading, Writing and Maths so that we can make sure all our children are making good progress.  Teachers do this through continual assessment: they observe who’s able to do things in whole-class teaching, in groups, when marking etc.

The end-of-year teacher assessments are even more important – we analyse the data in even greater detail.  To help get an accurate picture, teachers in Year 2 to Year 5 use some tests.  The tests don’t replace the teachers’ assessment; they inform it. Teachers are aware that a test represents just a snapshot, whilst their continual assessment shows what a child can really attain.

The teacher assessments at the end of each Key Stage are most important – they represent where a child has reached before moving into the next Key Stage.  Year 6 children are coming to the end of Key Stage 2.  As they are about to move to secondary school – an important transition point – the children will be given levels derived from both a teacher assessment and a test (the SATs).  The SATs are happening this week for the Year 6 pupils. Some children will be invited to have a go at Level 6 tests in Reading and Maths – these happen next week. Level 6 represents a level three or four years ahead of national expectations.

In Key Stage One, Year 2 teachers must submit assessments to the local authority and the Department for Education.  (Ofsted use these assessments to measure how well a school is doing based on Year 2 to Year 6 progress, for example.) Miss Hewson makes the assessment based partly on some tests, partly on continual assessment (just like in Year 3 – 5).  Last week, we had a visitor from Leeds Children’s Services.  He came to evaluate whether our end of Key Stage One teacher assessments are accurate and fair.  The meeting was a challenging three hours in length – the local authority assessor was very knowledgeable, very thorough, very rigorous but also very fair.  I’m delighted to report that this moderation process went extremely well.  Here’s an extract from the report:

[Miss Hewson] is confident in applying accurate and consistent judgements and did not overly rely on test results. The specific writing pieces seen were in line with national standards and correctly levelled. She talks about the children with good knowledge of their learning and an appreciation of their prior learning and circumstances. Her preparation was thorough and thoughtful, with a balanced range of evidence prepared diligently. The iPad evidence for reading was a great resource. It was a pleasure to work with you.

Well done, Miss Hewson, and well done to all our pupils trying their best in their tests just now.

Friday 11 May

There is no spelling homework this week due to SATs

Friday 11 May 2012

There is no  homework this week due to SATs.